Gene discovery via metabolic profiling

Biochemical analysis is adding a new dimension to the process of gene disco very. Two major developments have recently taken place in the emerging scie nce of biochemical genomics. The first is an approach that uses a combinati on of tagged fusion proteins and simple pooling strategies in order to effi ciently and directly assign biochemical function to the products of open re ading frames (ORFs) expressed in yeast. The second is the application of me tabolic profiling technologies to the study of mutant and transgenic plants . The latter approach has the potential not only to discover novel genes bu t also to ascribe a function to them in the context of the organism from wh ich they are derived.